I could make a regular series of “Weird Shit I’ve Heard Tonight.”   But only because this night isn’t any different than any other night … well, except those nights I stay home playing the Xbox 360… Which I do a lot of.  By choice.

     Tonight … ?

     “Computers are smarter than me, so if I use them, I can learn something,” she said.
     “A computer is a tool,” I said as I pulled a screwdriver from my coat pocket.  “It’s only as smart as the shit people put in it.  Can you learn anything from this?”
     “But I already know how to screw,” she said, looking at the screwdriver I was taking back from her hand.

     *cough*

     Believe me, I’ll carry a wrench in my coat pocket from now on…

     For a solid twenty four hours, I’ve been putting up with several people threatening me.  One of them came to my front door last night, and left in more a mess than a hurry.  Another, this morning, tried to get me to sign for something that doesn’t belong to me and I have no way to deliver to its recipient, whereupon he began getting beligerant and cursing at me.  I reminded him of the distance between him and the ground, and he left.

     For six months solid, people have been pushing me, baiting me, and using every single reaction they get as proof-positive that I’m a bad seed.  They’ve screwed with my car.  They’ve called cops.  They’ve stolen most everything I own.  And to top it all off, I’ve been accused of the most vile, ridiculous things and had tons of abuse heaped upon me for things I didn’t even do… even by people that I love.

     And it’s getting old.

     It ends now.

     [ The following is angry.  If you don't like anger and angst, don't read it.  But it's shit like this that's a big part of my problem. ]

     I have no brother, either.

     After all that crap, mom coming in and trashing the place, breaking computers and beating on me because it’s “her” house (even though she lived in Indiana and I was in Powell keeping the place up and paying the fucking mortgage), my own Brother decides to turn on me.

     Check out this Audio clip.

     He’s pretty sedate on this one.  The subject matter is amazing, considering I didn’t write poetry.  And if I did, how the Hell would he get it?  That’s just bizarre. 
     I didn’t know he was even working at the time, but when I asked WTF he was on about, I was told he drove a dump truck.  And things fall out of those pretty frequently, and people call in pissed.  Me, I’m smart enough not to tailgate dump trucks and wouldn’t've called in anyway.  Besides, I was working too much to bother with bullshit like that.
     But hey, he was having “someone” come and evict me, even though I’m supposed to face “him.”  That’s sort of ironic, really … getting someone else to do the dirty work?  When the truth is, he came and put rubber cement in all the house locks, stuck nails under my car tires, and even had the audacity to come and let the air out of two of my tires while my car was parked at a client location!  Got him on camera and everything!
     And it’s amazing how he never thought that maybe I hang up when people who start cussing me out and hurling abuse from the time I pick up the phone.

     After the court case, there was this one…

     This is immediately after the Judge ripped him a new asshole for lying on the stand.

     But I wonder who I was gonna murder?

     Pretty cool!  Sounds like it make a kickass book, and I have a great name for a lead character!

     It’s kinda fitting that in October of last year, he got the same treatment outta Mom.  He gave her money for a loan he’d made, and Mommy Dearest never bothered to tell my Father.  She also tried to subvert his wife just like she did mine, and he called to whine. 
     All I had to say was, “See?”

     In March, he called me to tell me his daughter was in the hospital.  He didn’t say what hospital, what room, what town he was in, or anything pertinent.  He just bitched that I didn’t call or care.

     When I finally got hold of him a few weeks ago, all he could do was whine about all the things Mom was doing to him, since I wasn’t available as her target of choice.

     I told him to suck it up and quit whining.

     Just like he did me.

     Except, uh, I didn’t sound like an inbred, paranoid hick when I said it.

     I hope to never hear from Asshat, Jr. again.

     [ The following is angry.  If you don't like anger and angst, don't read it.  But it's shit like this that's a big part of my problem. ]

     When I was three years old, some pretty bad things happened to me.  When I told my dear, sweet, innocent mother about those things, she beat the living crap out of me for it, and called me a liar.  So, at three years old, she took a wide, thick leather belt and wailed on me with it until my legs were bloody.  She did it a million times — wherever and whenever she could.  Legs, ass, arms, torso, face … you name it.  And it wasn’t just the belt.  It was anything she could pick up.

     Whenever anyone asked what happened to my legs, she’d always say that I got eaten up by mosquitos, and had scratched myself to death.  When they asked about the stripes which went most of the way around my arms (lengths of belt tend to wrap unless doubled, and she never did), she’d tell them that I was tying things around my arms, and to not let me do that.  A blow to the head, “Oh, he fell off the swing.”  A bloody nose, “Oh, he’s prone to nosebleeds.”
     I don’t scratch my bites.  Wrapping things around my arms is laughable.  I’m only clumsy when drunk.  And I’ve only had two nosebleeds in my life outside of the ones she gave me because she had no self control.

     Nobody ever bothered to think or even to try and stop it. 

     In public, she was so coy.  So convincing, calm, victimized.  There were facades to keep up, you see.  She had to appear to be financially secure, while spending every dime they both made.  And she never let my father live down the fact that she made more money than him.

     And so, I wish him a Belated, yet Happy, Father’s day.

     Happy Father’s day to my father, who watched the Devil he married beat me my entire life.  Happy Father’s day to the man who, just last year, let her come and trash my house and start breaking computers and beating me with a plastic bethroom shelf.  Happy Fathers day to the man who, when I got a restraining order against his wife, he allowed her to have me evicted, thus destroying my credit regardless of the fact that the judgement said I didn’t owe her a dime.  Happy Father’s day, to the man who got up in court and perjured himself repeatedly during the restraining order hearing, so much so that the Judge saw right through the inconsistent bullshit of his, his Devil wife and his son.  Happy Father’s day, to the man who’s whining to everyone in the world about how it’s tearing him up that he doesn’t hear from his son, and the day that I finally call, all he can do is bitch and call me a liar.

     Ultimately, it is you, Father, who allowed that situation to continue. 

     It was you, Father, who came to my house threatening me to drop the Order of Protection that I needed.

     It was you, Father, who made up your story in court.

     It was you, Father, who didn’t call me or return any e-mails.

     And it was you, Father, who turned on me — yet again.

     And it was you, Father, who perpetrated and condoned her lies and condemnation — “See?  He’s a liar, just like he was when he was three years old!” — even when you knew better.

     You, Father, are why I never had a family.

     I never deserved any of that, Father.

     And unlike you, Father, I could never do to people that I care about what you both did to me.

     So, to the biggest liar of them all, and the perfect role model of a crying, useless husband, Happy Father’s Day!

     Are you Happy now, Mr. Good Christian Man?

     I certainly hope so.

     The opposite Love is not Hate. 

     It’s Apathy.

     Something you’ve always had plenty of.

     I have no Father.